H D Robinson: Dred Scott and the Second Founding, Kartoniert / Broschiert

Klappentext

In 1857, the Supreme Court denied Dred Scott's claim to freedom and attempted to define Black Americans outside the nation's constitutional citizenship. The decision did more than decide the fate of one family. It exposed a constitutional crisis that had been building since the founding.

Dred Scott and the Second Founding traces the struggle over citizenship, slavery, freedom, and constitutional power from the founding era through the Civil War and Reconstruction. It examines the compromises embedded in the original Constitution, the political battles that divided the nation, the significance of emancipation, and the revolutionary changes brought by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.

At the center of the story are Black Americans themselves, whose lives, resistance, military service, political participation, legal advocacy, and demand for full citizenship helped transform the meaning of the Constitution.

The book follows that constitutional struggle beyond Reconstruction, showing how the promises of the Fourteenth Amendment were weakened, challenged, and later revived through generations of legal activism, including the work of Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall.

This is not simply the story of Dred Scott. It is the story of how the United States was forced to confront one of its oldest contradictions, and how Black Americans helped remake American citizenship.